SpliceHack

SpliceHack is a variant of NetHack 3.6.x and SLASH'EM developed by AntiGulp. The goal of SpliceHack's development is to create a balanced variant that is easy to pick up and play without extensive use of outside materials, which also incorporates a very large number of new and dynamic monsters, items, and features. SpliceHack is actively developed, and regularly incorporates ideas and feedback from the community. Discussion of SpliceHack occurs on the Hardfought IRC channel. Bugs can be reported there or on the issues page.

The current version of SpliceHack is 0.6.4.

Design philosophy

• All features and changes must be clear enough that a player from vanilla NetHack can learn to play SpliceHack without undue difficulty.
• Game balance must be carefully considered before making an addition.
• Any object or monster added must be unique in some way, be it in abilities, flavor, or special features.
• The endgame must be interesting and engaging. Additions that add variety to an ascension kit are highly valued.
• When possible, additions should be extensible in some way, such as monster steeds, new behaviors, or object materials, so that items and monsters added in vanilla can take advantage of them.
• A fully functioning tileset must be maintained at all times.

How to play SpliceHack

If one is familiar with vanilla NetHack, SpliceHack plays extremely similarly. New players may want to examine the list of new roles and races and the SpliceHack strategy guide. Regardless of whether one plays online or offline, SpliceHack comes with a fully functional tileset, and can be played in tiles or in ASCII mode.

• Online: SpliceHack v0.6.4 is hosted online on Hardfought.
• Offline: Developmental versions of SpliceHack can be compiled on unix systems using the source on GitHub.

Roles

All vanilla roles are available in SpliceHack, as well as several others.

• Cartomancer
• Dragonmaster
• Pirate

Races

All vanilla races are available in SpliceHack, as well as several others.

• Angel
• Drow
• Infernal
• Lycanthrope
• Merfolk

New roleplay and challenge mode options

SpliceHack contains many new challenge modes. All of these can be toggled manually inside of the options file.

• Intrinsicswap: Gaining a resistance other than poison resistance through food will cause you to lose your other resistances. Originally intended as an experimental balancing option, this is now a very challenging alternative gameplay mode.
• Deaf: A roleplay option and conduct that allows you to play a deaf character.
• Hallucinating: A roleplay option and conduct that allows you to play a permanently hallucinating character. Using an artifact to gain hallucination resistance will break this, as will drinking a potion of sickness.
• Clumsy: A roleplay option and conduct that allows you to play a permanently fumbling character. Probably not terribly hard to ascend with, just very frustrating.
• Illfated: A challenge mode where the dungeon difficulty is automatically upped by 50.
• Marathon: A challenge mode where you start with 999 HP, but cannot heal or otherwise regenerate hit points.

Quality of life changes

• Colored walls and floors, using modified version of L's colored walls and floors patch.
• Branch staircases are colored yellow (ported from xNetHack).
• Altars are colored based on alignment (ported from xNetHack).
• Paranoid trap and swim confirmation (ported from xNetHack).
• Peaceful monsters can be displaced (ported from xNetHack).
• Looking at monsters now tells you what weapon they are wielding, and whether they are armored. Looking up a monster provides you with a list of their resistances, attacks, and other statistics (ported from xNetHack and expanded on).
• The hilite_hidden_stairs option highlights stairs with objects on top of them (ported from NAO 3.4.3).
• Deadly poison no longer instantly kills you, but instead will cause both HP and attribute damage.
• #give can be used to give items to your pet or peaceful monsters, putting the items directly in their inventory. This should streamline the process of trying to get pets to take something.
• The vibrating square can be teleported onto directly.
• Artifact wishing is based on the number of artifacts wished for, not generated, preventing the increased number of artifacts from nerfing artifact wishing.

Monsters and Monster AI

SpliceHack contains a very large number of monsters, both original and from other variants. See the list of monsters in SpliceHack for more information. Additionally, all monsters in SpliceHack are smarter and make more effective use of items than their vanilla counterparts. This change makes combat more difficult, but also makes pets more effective. It is much more worthwhile to keep a pet around long term in SpliceHack than in vanilla.

• SpliceHack implements an updated version of the intelligent pet patch, from GruntHack. This means that monsters will cast spells at one another, use ranged attacks against other monsters, and more.
• Monsters now use a wider variety of items, including (but not limited to) applying figurines, sacrificing corpses on altars, and playing instruments. They are even capable of making wishes from smoky potions.
• Monsters are capable of riding other monsters. The movement speed of the rider is not changed based on the steed. Currently, only headless horsemen and the Riders use steeds.
• Monsters that eat corpses can gain intrinsics, just like the player does. This makes keeping a pet around much more worthwhile than in vanilla. Monsters are capable of gaining displacement, jumping, water walking, and other abilities that are not available to them in vanilla.

New damage types

• Sonic: Sonic damage can destroy any type of glass or gemstone item, and gaining resistance to it is extremely difficult. It can be resisted if one is deafened.
• Psychic: Psychic damage cannot be reflected in the form of rays, but does not affect mindless monsters.

Object materials

SpliceHack makes use of the object materials patch from xNetHack. This becomes particularly important to remember when playing as an infernal, since they will be grievously harmed by silver objects.

Ascension run changes

The endgame of SpliceHack is much more hectic than vanilla. Although the mysterious force is no longer an issue, many other obstacles stand in your way as you ascend through the dungeon with the Amulet:

• While you have the amulet, many monsters are generated awake.
• Upon performing the invocation ritual, all demon princes and demon lords that have not yet been generated or been slain will instantly teleport to random levels with the dungeon, including SpliceHack-specific demons. This means that one will almost definitely encounter Demogorgon in the course of ascension. Fortunately, unique demons spawned this way are not covetous.
• The Astral Plane is populated by more player monsters than in vanilla. Due to the increased number of artifacts, it is more likely than in vanilla that you will encounter player monsters with artifact weapons.
• All player monsters are capable of stealing the Amulet from you. If they succeed in stealing it, they will flee. Should a monster manage to make it to a coaligned high altar with the amulet, they will sacrifice it, causing you to lose the game.